Challenges of Scaling Up a Business

Many growth-company leaders reach a point where they actually dread adding another customer, employee or location. It feels like they are just adding more weight to an ever-heavier anchor they are dragging up the hill. To make matters worse, the increased revenues haven’t turned into more profitability, so at some point, they wonder if the journey is worth the effort.

Scaling Up focuses on the four major decisions every company must get right: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash — a series of One-Page Tools including the famous One-Page Strategic Plan and the Rockefeller Habits Execution Checklist, which more than 40,000 firms around the globe have used to scale their companies successfully. Running a business is ultimately about freedom. Scaling Up shows owners how to achieve it, no matter how big and complicated a business becomes.

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What Our Clients Say About Us

Testimonial

Jason A Jacobson

CEO, NetGain Technologies

We recently sold our business to private equity. It was unexpected, but we realized selling a business is often not on your timeline but on the market’s timeline. I know you probably hear this a lot, but I specifically wanted to let you know I think one of the reasons they felt very good about our organization was the fact that we have implemented your habits. From the daily huddles to the one-page plan, I truly feel the disciplined culture we have formed around the Rockefeller Habits helped us achieve the top 10% of multiples in our industry on the sale!

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Paul Binsfeld

President, Company Nurse

Verne, over 2 years ago, I made the commitment to Scale Up, using Jason Rush from PETRA (Scaling Up Certified coach) as my catalyst. Some amazing things have happened at Company Nurse over these past two years. First, I had three “leaders” on my team self-select themselves out of my company, which was an immense blessing. Second, our company culture improved to the point where we regularly get 8.8/10 scores on happiness from my employees. Culture has never been better! And, third, I have attracted some kick-ass talent and we are on our way to our BHAG of 15x growth by 2028.

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Zack Stenger

Education Chair, SF Bay – Young Presidents' Organization

Verne’s recent Rockefeller Habit’s presentation to the SF Bay Young Presidents’ Organization was a success! While many business resources focus on theory, Verne delivers practical tools, which can immediately impact corporate results. Verne’s fast-paced, entertaining presentation style enabled him to cover the Rockefeller Habits while customizing the program on the fly in order to address burning issues on our CEOs’ minds. Verne’s very high rating for this event is simply par for the course for the Growth Guy.

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Fred Crosetto

CEO, AMMEX

I have worked with Verne since 1999 and seen our revenues grow from $6 million to almost $100 million for 2015. We’ve also expanded across North America and Asia. Each time I personally hear Verne, I come away with 1-2 great ideas and 3-4 ideas that I can walk back and immediately apply in my business. Multiply that times the other team members coming and you can imagine the value!

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Scott Nash

CEO, MOM'S Organic Market

I was in a YEO forum with a guy who took his company from $7 million to $40 million, eventually selling to Raytheon for $40 million. After hearing his repeated references to Verne Harnish, I finally attended the Rockefeller Habits seminar. I honestly believe that without ever going, I’d still be running a mom and pop operation and probably hating my job–begging someone to buy me out!

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Kevin Lewandowski

Founder & CEO Discogs

Two years ago I was just about to hire employee #10 and I knew things would have to change but I wasn’t sure exactly what or how to do it. I picked up Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and I really identified with the material. Then I found out there was an upcoming workshop in Seattle and that’s where I met Keith Upkes. We started working together right after and Keith’s help has made a huge difference in my business and my life. Things are fun and exciting now, and the challenges less daunting.

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Craig Falk

Owner, Craig Cares

Mastering the Rockefeller Habits is the best management book I’ve read. I love its concise format and practical advice on how to grow your company. I use the One Page Strategic Plan with my team every year to set our course as a company. I read the book for the first time three years ago and I re-read it frequently.

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Bill Saint

President & CEO, Classica Homes

We are a luxury home builder in Charlotte, N.C. that has adopted many of the principles in Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and wanted to pass along our gratitude for helping us grow and thrive. The era of the mega-mansion is over, and we heard loud and clear that our buyers wanted incredible luxury, but in the right size and price. Our Island Collection, introduced in only 8 months, was all possible due to intense focus by our entire team.

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Greg Krasnov

CEO, Platinum Bank

We are now the market leader in our main loan product, and we are growing rapidly, taking market share in other retail loan products and retail deposits, and actively pursuing acquisitions. I think that using Rockefeller Habits was absolutely THE key factor in our ability to achieve this. It is an incredibly powerful system, whose simplicity makes it possible to communicate our strategic plans and progress to each person in our now 1,600-strong employee body. If you want real results, forget a Harvard MBA and spend a few days with Verne! I know of no other strategic management system that is better.

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Phil Miner

Chairman, Miner Holding Co.

We will never miss a Growth Summit again! The lost opportunity costs are simply too great.

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Jeff Booth

CEO, BuildDirect

Learning the Rockefeller Habits is the single best thing we have done as a company. It has led to complete company alignment, faster learning, and numerous breakthroughs. More importantly, the process has allowed us to thrive despite being in an industry that has fallen almost 70% in the last number of years. I consider it a must for any leadership team looking to grow its business.

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Mellie Cline

Allie Beth Allman & Associates

I am a realtor. Your website and blog are like crack. I started reading your book this morning on the treadmill. When I got home and went to sign up for the weekly email I discovered the treasure trove of various pdfs and other material online and spent the rest of the morning exploring. Holy cow! I finally managed to pull myself away, but it took a lot of discipline. I’ve been looking forward to reading your book, but I can see I’m going to enjoy it even more than anticipated.

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Tony Petrucciani

CEO, Single Source Systems, Inc

Several of the management techniques (our daily “adrenaline” meetings and weekly management meetings) that we implemented over the years helped us get to a much better valuation than we would have otherwise.

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Henry Mcgovern

Chairman and CEO, AmRest (WSE: EAT)

Gazelles deliver more value for the $ than anyone else in the business!

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Bill Becker

President, Recordsforce

Recordsforce has been using Gazelles for a year and a half and we love it! It has made an amazing difference for me as CEO to have a real methodology for running my business.

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Gene C. Towle

Managing Partner, Softec

I was very excited to find out that the Gazelles [coaching] program is available in Spanish in Mexico. Our primary market, housing, is in a serious crisis. [Your team] did a spectacular job in helping our company get back on track using the methodology of the Rockefeller Habits workshop.

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Dwight Cooper

CEO, PPR Healthcare Staffing

I spoke to a group of CEOs and told them they needed to attend a Rockefeller Habits workshop and if they did not love it I would pay for their attendance!

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Dan Rogers

President/CEO, Point to Point Transportation Services, Inc

It took some floundering to navigate the path of attempting to apply the Habits by ourselves but we then signed up for a Rockefeller Habits workshop and started working with your coach Ron Huntington. The results have been complete as expected – phenomenal. As a result of our success, I now actually have the time to work on my business (and myself). Thanks to Gazelles for being a huge part of our success at P2P!

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Skip Keaton

Director of Sales and Service, On Demand Parts®3D Systems Corporation

One of my mentors introduced your book “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” to me a little over 5 years ago and we really used it as a blueprint for the foundation of our success. And what success Quickparts has had! We use most of the tools that you discuss from daily huddles to a one-page strategic plan. A large part of what we do and the success we have had comes from your 147 pages. So this is my small thank you for a great book!

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Steve Mckean

CEO, Acceller

Gazelles’ two biggest value-adds for CEOs are providing a scalable management structure from zero to $100 million and vetting the business concepts and learning we need to grow our businesses. It is stressful to see more information being produced than can be consumed, so curating all the new ideas and authors, as you do, is huge for us.

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Todd Andrews

CEO, Spinal Elements, Inc.

This is the most actionable and insightful business book I’ve ever read, and I read 4 at a time!

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Jeshua Zapata

Partner, Xzito.com

Mastering the Rockefeller Habits has been fantastic, the book has been easy to understand stand, and it has been helping us grow as a management team, building a common language and a series of tools to manage our business effectively. The concepts are easy to understand, yet deep, profound and powerful. I wish we had this book when we 1st started the firm.

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Roman Senecky

Managing Director, Mondi

My sincere thanks for the Rockefeller Habits training. I attended it with my team last year in Prague. We implemented numerous processes (daily meeting, good news, next 90 days, business lunch, and walking together) during the year at our 1,200-person company. Our learning resulted in a clear definition of our strategy and priorities…

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Jon Kinning

COO and Owner, RK Mechanical, Inc

We are a huge disciple of your book and system for planning. We incorporated the one-page strategic plan about three years ago and use it as our platform for all of our planning across 5 business lines and corporately. We have married up your book with Getting Things Done by David Allen and Who by Geoff Smart. We utilize the scorecard system in Who to assign accountability to the plan and utilize the project plan in GTD to assign the next three action steps per Rock.

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Jason Smith

President and CEO, Real Matters

We are a $150 million a year revenue company and continue to grow 40% plus annually. The organization is thriving on “Verne’s Growth Drugs” with daily stand-ups, meeting rhythms, war rooms and strategic planning processes fully integrated into the DNA of the company. The result: we are executing on our strategy, and with a recently completed $40 million financing we are accelerating our growth through strategic acquisitions.

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Dr. Steven Hotze

CEO, Hotze Enterprises

Mastering the Rockefeller Habits continues to be the best and most practical business book I have ever read. It is the foundation on which our enterprises have been built. Verne, thank you.

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David Mammano

Founder/CEO, NextStepU.com

Without Verne’s tools, we’d still be in the entrepreneurial stone age! Listen to the master… the Yoda of Entrepreneurship!

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Jean-Pierre Leblanc

Co-Founder & Chair, SajeWellness

After 18 years of not knowing how to truly lead our company, I asked my partners to treat the Rockefeller Habits as our operating system. They agreed. Since then we’ve taken a business that just couldn’t seem to reach $5m and grew it to $22m in 4 fun years.

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Gerben Nijmeijer

CEO, Wazzup

Scaling Up is very applicable, even if you have a small, but fast-growing company. This year we will be growing from 1 to 6 countries with about 25 staff which would not have happened without your book. It’s like Hogwarts school for entrepreneurs (which makes Verne professor Dumbledore!). The thing I like most about it is that it helps the ‘geek’ generation learn about strategy and execution quickly and clearly. Scaling Up has been an indispensable help for us, thanks a lot for that.

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Kevin Chin

Founder and Managing Director, Arowana & Co.

The implementation of the Rockefeller Habits has had a profound impact on Arowana & Co. We have grown from $40m to nearly $500m in group enterprise value with virtually zero debt and despite the global financial crisis. $350m has come post implementation of the Rockefeller Habits in our business almost 3 years ago. Our BHAG now is how do we grow 10 fold again from $500m over the next 10 years and with this in mind we have commenced our expansion internationally. Without the discipline of RH, I think the BHAG is a pipe dream.

Testimonial

Frank Cowell

President, Elevator

I thoroughly enjoyed your talk and am kicking myself for not having my business partner there with me. Your talk was, quite possibly, the best talk I’ve ever attended. When I came home from your talk, I told my wife “this guy was literally dropping gold out of his mouth!”

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Craig Hodges

CEO, King Content

I attended your two-day workshop organized in Sydney. Your focus on growth strategies really resonated with me and I adopted many as they matched with my ideals for the business when we started. Fast forward just over five years and we just sold for $48 million building offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore, HK, London, and New York. I’m sure you’ve heard it many times but those growth strategies work!

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Owen Yates

Partner, Frontline Real Estate Services

Frontline Real Estate Services was built using the guidelines of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and we’ve grown the company to be the 11th largest commercial brokerage in British Columbia.

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Jay Kinder

National Association of Expert Advisors, CEO & Co-founder

When we started our business in 2006 we were just entrepreneurs with a dream. In 2008 we were introduced to Mastering the Rockefeller Habits by a vendor partner who was in Entrepreneur Organization. That book changed our business. Since then we have relentlessly followed Verne’s advice, tools, and techniques to grow our company. We are now on our 4th year in a row as one of Inc. Magazines top 5,000 fastest growing companies. There is no way we would have been able to engineer and manage this kind of growth without adopting Vernes’ principles into our business.

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Gary Pica

President, TruMethods

I have built 3 successful businesses using Verne’s methodology. As a business coach myself, I work with hundreds of business owners around the world and encourage all of them to make The Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up the framework for growing a successful business. I have found that business planning discipline is the leading indicator of success in business. Truly mastering the Rockefeller Habits is a lifelong journey.